Sweet things

It's hard to go wrong with butter, sugar, and flour. Especially when you add some vanilla or chopped almonds, right? My mom and I had some fun in her kitchen recreating some of my grandmother's traditional Danish cookie recipes. Unfortunately I was too busy rotating cookie trays in and out of the oven to take any photos of the cookie-covered kitchen counters [try saying that three times fast!] but here's a nice shot of the final results.



The "recipes" we followed were really just ingredients and measurements [in grams] and oven temperatures [in Celsius] all written in Danish, with no instructions except what my mom remembered from making them as a kid.

I would like to mention that this week our little pupparoni turned 11! Penny's gone through some rough patches over the past year but she's been doing well lately so her birthday was quite the happy occasion. Check out the cute photo of the birthday pup that Rich snapped this afternoon in our "backyard."


We had a pretty chill New Year's Eve. Hung out at home, watched movies, and then watched awesome fireworks from our couch! Yes, we have the pleasure of a beautiful view from the couch in our living room. Water, clouds, birds, cruise ships, helicopters, sail boats, and even, briefly, a waterfall.

On New Year's Day, Rich's nieces bigA & littleA came up for a sleepover. Let me tell you, there are few things more fun than spending a night eating Flavor-Ice while playing MarioKart 64, "chubbybunny" [see photo below], and Crazy Eights with these girls!


Someone came up with the brilliant idea of playing "chubbybunny" [a game in which each player puts as many marshmallows as possible into their mouth while saying "chubbybunny" after each 'mallow is inserted] with grapes. While I stood at the ready to practice those wonderful CPR skills I learned in high school health class, Rich helped count grapes and took videos while the girls giggled and spit mangled grapes on the counters. I cannot tell you the last time I laughed that hard. These girls are beyond-words funny and such a blast to hang out with!

Speaking of A & A, I've been meaning to share this photo of the cake I made for their brother D's birthday/Christmas cake. This came about as a result of my first [failed] fudge attempt from around Christmas-time. I accidentally put a whole can of coconut milk into my fudge instead of just two-thirds of a cup, which resulted in a perfect frosting consistency and so that is what it became!


Pretty good for a nice Jewish girl, no?

Welcome

Hello!

I decided to create this space to share my design work from school, sewing and craft projects, recipes I've tried out, and the little stories of the everyday. I thought it would be nice to start by sharing some photos from my first day of winter break, the day I decided to start this journal.




The morning began with sleeping in late & some tasty egg sandwiches [mine didn't have sausage but this one was more fun to photograph!] My new favorite condiment to put on everything is sriracha and egg sandwiches are brought to a whole new level with this stuff. I'm not someone who normally puts hot sauce [like Tabasco] on my eggs but sriracha is amazing. If you like spicy foods & you are not already on the sriracha train, I strongly suggest you go pick up a bottle!




The lower tip of Manhattan through the snow, as seen from our balcony.




From here you can see our lower neighbors' much larger balconies. I was jealous of the snow that they were able to accumulate -- I would definitely make a snowman if I had one of those balconies.




I made some fudge as gifts for Rich's nieces & nephews & for the people who work in our building. I used this recipe from Heidi Swanson's blog 101 Cookbooks. I just received her cookbook Super Natural Cooking for my birthday from my dad & I'm super excited about trying a bunch of the recipes in it!




The fudge: all wrapped up.




Rich enjoyed the leftover scraps left in the pan after I cut up the fudge.



Later that night, I met up with my good friend Raven and her dad to go to her class show [she's in the Fine Arts department at Parsons]. We grabbed some awesome sushi at my favorite Japanese restaurant from my old neighborhood, Mizu.



Inside Raven's cozy, peaceful fort, her contribution to the show. I am so proud of this girl & the work she has done this year!




My snowy walk home later that night along the water.


I hope you'll stop back again as I update with progress on teaching myself how to crochet, attempts at bread-baking, & the sewing of my senior thesis collection!